This week in the War on Workers: Striking student guest workers go to NYC McDonald's

The student guest workers who last week walked off the job to protest conditions at the Pennsylvania McDonald's restaurants where they were working on J-1 cultural exchange visas protested at a Times Square McDonald's this week.

In a statement e-mailed during the protest, McDonald's announced that [franchise owner] Andy Cheung 'has agreed to leave the McDonald's system.' The company added that it was 'also working on connecting with the guest workers on an individual basis to most effectively address this situation,' and providing franchisees with information about the J-1 visa program's requirements. The National Guestworker Alliance did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the McDonald's announcement.

McDonald's did not immediately respond to a request for further comment regarding the strikers' demands, which include providing full-time work for US employees, disclosing where guest workers are employed in its stores, signing an agreement establishing organizing protections for workers, and ensuring that the students are compensated for unpaid wages. [...]

In an e-mailed statement, striking students called the McDonald's announcement 'an important admission of labor abuse at its stores,' but said that, 'a change of management at three stores will not protect the guestworkers and U.S. workrs at McDonald's 14,000 other stores in the U.S.' The strikers reiterated their call for a meeting with the company's CEO 'to come to an agreement on how to protect all McDonald's workers.'

As the students insist, the way to address the kind of abuse they faced isn't one-on-one. This is a problem both with McDonald's more generally and with the J-1 visa program, and has to be addressed from the top.